Helicopter money and the Chicago plan

The world economy crawls along and mainstream economists remain worried that a typical sustained economic recovery i.e led by rising business investment generating more jobs and a reduction in unemployment boosting consumption, is absent. The answer of the Austerians is that the economy and the people must wait until the overhang of debt in the major capitalist economies is removed and, primarily, this means a reduction in public sector debt and deficit levels and real wage cuts. The answer of the Keynesians is the opposite: instead we need to keep interest rates low by central bank monetary measures and also expand government spending and borrowing to stimulate investment; or fill the gaps in private sector investment and consumption (aggregate demand) with public investment and consumption. Don’t worry about debt levels, but spend now and, with growth, the debt will look after itself.

This debate continues because nothing seems to work: austerity or traditional Keynesian monetary easing. Although central banks have lowered short-term interest rates nearly to zero, so that we have negative real interest rates (after inflation) and central banks have pumped trillions of dollars into the banking system, the banks, still overloaded with debts and weakened balance sheets, are unable or unwilling to lend. And anyway, the large corporations are flush with cash and don’t need to borrow. Yet they are still unwilling to invest at sufficient levels to restore booming economies.

So now some Keynesians are calling for more unconventional measures, closer to the policies advocated by the proponents of modern monetary theory (MMT). They say, let’s bypass the banking system altogether and get central banks and governments to lend money directly to households and small businesses – in a way, just get a helicopter and drop the cash across the country. ‘Helicopter money’ is the analogy first hinted at by Ben Bernanke, the current chief of the Federal Reserve, when he argued that the Fed had the power to stimulate the economy by printing money and directly delivering it to the spenders. He did not advocate doing this, just that it was possible.

Along with the idea of ‘helicopter money’ comes the idea that governments should just increase spending and rather than finance the extra spending by issuing bonds to be purchased by the banks and pension funds at increasingly high rates of interest, just get the central bank to buy them direct by creating more money. Why should the central bank create money simply to give to the banks, which are not lending anyway? Why not increase money supply to give to the government to spend or to the people direct? As Martin Wolf put it in his recent column: “I fail to see any moral force to the idea that fiat money should only promote private spending”. Adair Turner, the UK’s former head bank regulator, raised the same ideas – bypass the banks and let government spending be financed directly by the central bank.

As Wolf puts it, “When expanding private credit and spending is so hard, if not downright dangerous, the case for using the state’s power to create credit and money in support of public spending is strong. The quantity of extra central bank money required would surely be smaller than under today’s scattergun quantitative easing.” As Lord Turner notes, “Japan should have done some outright monetary financing over the last 20 years, and if it had done so would now have a higher nominal gross domestic product, some combination of a higher price level and a higher real output level, and a lower debt to gross domestic product ratio”.

These proposals are also linked to what used to be called the Chicago Plan, namely the proposal of a group of economists at the University of Chicago in the 1930s who responded to the Depression by arguing for severing the link between the supply of credit to the private sector and creation of money. The other leading economist of the time (apart from Keynes), Irving Fisher supported the idea, as did Milton Friedman in “A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability”, published in 1948. The essence of this plan was full backing of deposits by public debt. This scheme, they argued, would eliminate the instability of private credit and debt, dramatically reduce overt public debt and largely eliminate the many defects of current forms of private debt. Now some economists at the IMF have resurrected the idea in a recent working paper, “The Chicago Plan Revisited” (IMF Working Paper WP/12/202). IMF Working Paper WP/12/202. Minskyite Modern Monetary Theory radical economist, Steve Keen, has also got excited about this Chicago Plan as a way round the blockages of the banking system and the dreaded risk of expanding uncontrollable private credit, which Keen sees (ironically rather like the right-wing Austrian school) as the real devil in the capitalist system (http://rwer.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/the-imf-gets-radical/).

The Chicago Plan proposes changing the nature of money and money creation in the economy from a nominally private-sector affair, in which commercial banks serve as the engines of money growth, to an exclusively public sector one. On the surface, the Chicago plan has some very attractive benefits. First, there would be a switch from national debt to national surplus, as if by magic. “Because under the Chicago Plan banks have to borrow reserves from the treasury to fully back liabilities, the government acquires a very large asset vis-à-vis banks. Our analysis finds that the government is left with a much lower, in fact negative, net debt burden.” The IMF paper says total liabilities of the US financial system – including shadow banking – are about 200% of GDP. The new reserve rule would create a windfall. This would be used for a “potentially a very large, buy-back of private debt”, perhaps 100% of GDP. In other words, if the central bank provides new money to the government, it can buy bank assets and so reduce the net debt figures for the government – just by creating money out of thin air!

Second, private banks would lose the power to create deposits by making loans, as all deposits would have to be backed by public sector debt or by bank profits. In effect, lending would be controlled directly by government. “The control of credit growth would become much more straightforward because banks would no longer be able, as they are today, to generate their own funding, deposits, in the act of lending, an extraordinary privilege that is not enjoyed by any other type of business,” says the IMF paper. “Rather, banks would become what many erroneously believe them to be today, pure intermediaries that depend on obtaining outside funding before being able to lend.” And that outside funding would be the government.

This all sounds great. So what is wrong with it? Well, first, the private banking system would be sent to jail. Only governments would have the power to expand reserves and thus lending. Well what’s wrong with that, you might say? Well, the banks would still be privately owned, but now on the brink of going bust or having to turn into outright speculative investment operations like hedge funds to make a profit. So, in some way, there would be even more instability in the banking system than before, not less. The Chicago Plan would only work if the banks were brought into public ownership and made part of an overall funding and investment plan. But if that happened, there would be no need for a Chicago Plan.

Then there is inflation. Creating money out of thin air means that money supply can move out of line with growth in the real economy, namely commodity production in the capitalist sector. Unless production in the capitalist sector expands, more money will start chasing less goods. Price inflation will ensue and so will financial asset speculation. Real incomes for the average worker will be hit by rising prices, instead of falling employment. Keynesians like Turner deny this. For them, government spending financed by central bank monetisation, or helicopter money, will boost ‘aggregate demand’ , i.e investment and consumption and so economic growth will return to match the expansion in the money supply.

Adair Turner reckons that monetisation of Japan’s public debt with some increased inflation would have avoided Japan’s lost decade. Well, the evidence is against that as my recent posts have argued (see, https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/02/14/japans-lost-decades-unpacked-and-repacked/). The outcome of debt monetisation or a Chicago plan to bypass the banking system will not be a sustained economic recovery, but either a new bout of financial asset speculation or rising prices in the shops, or both. It is not the banking system that has to be bypassed but the capitalist system of production for profit that has to replaced by planned investment under common ownership. Indeed, if the banking system is circumvented, the capitalist system of production will be thrown into greater confusion.

12 Responses to “Helicopter money and the Chicago plan”

It seems that IMF is sensing the tipping point of deficit spending. No end in sight. What can be done with the monster (debt) that not only is not going away but growing at an alarming rate? Monetize it! Desperate!
Monetizing the debt, which has been work in progress, will be devastating to people in poorer countries. If half of Americans are one paycheck away from poverty, a lot of people in poor countries are one meal away from starvation. Many of the poor countries import a lot of food. Rising food prices due to inflation is a recipe for disaster for the poor people around the world.

BTW, is “capitalist sector” the same as the so called private sector? By contrast, is government sector the same as non-capitalist sector?

By the ‘capitalist sector’ I mean companies producing for profit and competing in the market, not household spending (that’s consumption by workers) or government (services and production not for profit). The latter two sectors used in national income accounting are not capitalist sectors.

‘Then there is inflation. Creating money out of thin air means that money supply can move out of line with growth in the real economy, namely commodity production in the capitalist sector.’

Just wondering is it not the case that this, i.e. creating money out of thin air, has been happening massively over the last few years with no noticeable growth in inflation? At least in terms of price inflation as opposed to asset speculation.

I’m a total amateur so obviously I can well imagine I’ve got the wrong end of the stick here.

No you have not got the wrong end. There is little inflation in the so-called real economy, indeed this Long Depression is deflationary. This shows that any artificial injection of money supply right now just fuels financial asset prices. Bond prices are at peaks and stock prices are returning towards 2007 levels. But pumping in more money is not reviving the economy. If profitability were to rise, then investment would get going and production would rise. Ironically, then there would be no need to pump in money. The demand for money would drive the supply. All quantitative easing or helicopter money does is improve balance sheets and/or keep the cost of borrowing down. But if the private sector won’t invest and the public sector is cut back, there is no investment.

Michael,
Even if we assume that the 2% inflation rate in the US is not a bogus number and considering, as you say, that this long depression is deflationary then what we have is the effect of money printing on overcoming the deflation + creating inflation. So in reality the real inflation created is higher than the 2%. I don’t know what the deflation rate would have been without the printed money. Indeed in 2009 there was deflation. In other words, money printing effect = deflation rate + inflation rate.

When the FED prints money out of thin air and buys government bonds and the government spends that money on everything from defense to unemployment benefits then that money goes directly into the real economy. At least some of the money printed out of thin air ends up in the real economy and can lead to much higher inflation. Would you agree? Thank you.

Except that governments are cutting spending not increasing it, especially in productive investment. The argument of the helicopter Keynesians is that governments should now spend more, even if the budget deficit and debt level rise for a while and monetise that increased spending through the Fed creating more money. My short post raises points on why that won’t work in restoring the capitlist economy on a sustained (ie profitable) basis.

“This shows that any artificial injection of money supply right now just fuels financial asset prices. Bond prices are at peaks and stock prices are returning towards 2007 levels.”

So what you’re saying is: the money is being given to banks, who’re investing it in various financial instruments (like stocks & bonds) rather than the real economy, this is fuelling a bubble in those stock and bond prices, making banks’ balance sheets look good but getting little in the way of loans and investment into the real economy.

The following sentences sound quantity theory of money or monetary. How would you compare these to M’s anti-QTM?

“Creating money out of thin air means that money supply can move out of line with growth in the real economy, namely commodity production in the capitalist sector. Unless production in the capitalist sector expands, more money will start chasing less goods. Price inflation will ensue and so will financial asset speculation.”

Michael,
I think that you have tried to answer two different problems with the same answer.

Helicopter money cannot save capitalism from itself as profits are the determinant force that drives investment.

Helicopter money is an alternative to Capitalism in which investment is decided democratically. If used inside Capitalism, then it is like a drug that prevents Capitalism from destroying itself for a period of time, if of course the money go to the real economy.

Thus Keynesians make a double mistake.

First, they believe that printing money will save Capitalism from itself. It can’t. It is just an aspirin.

Secondly, because of the first mistake, they do not see that helicopter money works because it is not controlled by profits and thus the only solution is to go to an economy without profits with increased democratic control.

Helicopter money is anticapitalist. Keynesians do not see it that way.
In your effort to explain the errors of Keynesian Economic thinking, you have accepted helicopter money as a method to save Capitalism rather than what it is, a glimpse into an economy not driven by profit.